It has been so many days since I last updated this journal – just can’t seem to find the motivation nor the reason to do so. I don’t see a point, actually.
But hey, it’s part of my “chess tasks” so I might as well continue doing it seeing that I’ve just wasted my time playing blitz and bullets on Lichess lul.
💓Why do I love chess?
No matter what “style” we have, everyone who plays chess will find joy in the romantic-era attacking. I am not an exception – the swash-buckling attacking style does brings joy to me. Take this position for example.
Magerramov – Kasparov, 1977 Black to move
What did the great Kasparov played? Well, the king is in the center, so he went for the throat.
As usual, I’ve been demotivated myself and didn’t do anything except for playing online blitz against random players. It irks me to know that I played blitz – because I am against playing blitz when one is trying to improve their chess.
I guess I am probably cursed? I dunno.
… and we went to the Malaysia Chess Festival 2025 held in KL Gateway Mall.
Will probably write about it in another post; the visit brought some memories back.
Though it’s not literally the third day, I’ve been procrastinating during the weekend. I blame it on the tournaments (not me, but my daughter’s) and the classes that I had to teach.
I enjoy teaching chess, I really do. It’s just that sometimes I don’t feel like I am a good coach, that sometimes I fumble, and not able to convey whatever that I have in my mind.
Perhaps my thought ran too fast, maybe I need to slow down.
💓Why do I love chess?
The ideas behind each move in the classical games – those are the things that I truly, truly love.
I marvel at how simple the ideas are – during my younger days I would read the annotations and thought to myself “this is super simple. Why didn’t I think of it?”
One example is in Capablanca vs Corzo, Havana 1901. In the above position, Capablanca crafted a very, very simple plan indeed. He played 28. g4. His plan? It’s to simply to create a passed pawn on the kingside. So the game goes
28. g4 fxg4
29. Bd3!?
Black’s g-pawn will certainly fall, so he aims for the g6 pawn, trying to create a passed pawn. Corzo played 29. … Nf5, overlooking the good move 29. … Ne4! maintaining equality.
Capablanca simply took black’s g-pawn, black took white’s d-pawn, allowing white to capture on g6 and thus creating his own passed pawn.
29. … Nf5?
30. Kxg4 Nxd4
31. Bxg6
The position after this is simply winning for Capablanca; the bishop and pawn not only created a barrier to stop the black king from coming over; the knight is not strong enough to stop the passed pawn and attack on the queenside.
You can view the rest of the game here. I might do a short video on this endgame because it really fascinates me at how simple Capablanca’s strategy was.
Why don’t I have simple thinking process and strategic understanding like that in my games? 🤔😅
⚒️What I worked on today?
Just for fun, I created a new Lichess and chess.com account. Why? It’s because of a silly conversation my family and I had with my daughter’s coach. She’s from Indonesia and told me that there’s a supernatural creature named “Babi Ngepet”. It requires two players – one is to guard a flame while the other one turns into a pig and steals people’s money. This pig-guy will turn into a man and loses his supernatural abilities if the flame were extinguish so his friend must make sure the flame remains burning.
Not sure if Dark Souls 3 is inspired by this, or the other way round. Haha
Imagine Dark Soul’s bonfire, but used to protect supernatural pigs.
So the new account’s name is B4biNgepet, on both platform. Had to be a little bit creative due to the original name already taken.
Well jokes aside, I also focuses more on endgames, not for me, but for teaching my students. One of the exercise that I enforce is the bishop and knight checkmate – must do it under one minute.
Feel the pain!
🎉We have our first Grandmaster!🎉
Yeoh Li Tian has manages to break the 2500 rating point, achieved the GM norm previously and as of August 2025, he is entitled to receive his Grandmaster title.
This makes him the first grandmaster from Malaysia!
I really hope that many more grandmaster will come.
Congratulations, Li Tian!
Shameless claim – played him once and drew. This was 5 years ago, September 2020.
Hey, I might even share the game I played with IM GM Yeoh Li Tian on September 2020!
It’s a simul game, so he was not playing on his full strength. That explains the draw. 😁
It was a slow day today, I was down with a slight fever, had to take a medical leave from work and thus were unable to do much on chess.
I did teach, though. Had a class and, seeing that I am a dedicated coach, did not cancelled and went on to teach.
💓Why do I love chess?
I find joy in learning the small, minute differences that will only become apparent in a long run. The most famous example is the explanation/calculation/flexing done by the ex-World Champion, Garry Kasparov.
In this famous game, Kasparov, in the heat of the attack, suddenly tucked his king away to h2 on his 31st move. This “tempo-losing” move was explained by him in the famous “Kasparov mind-boggling calculation” video circulating on Youtube. He simply said that “now knight can go because my rook is hanging without check”.
Why this is baffling? Because normal player like me would “unpin” my heavy artillery by simply moving them. Not Kasparov, though. He move his king instead so that the pinned piece can move and the opponent can capture the piece behind it without a check.
